As your website grows and evolves, you may find that you have installed plugins that are no longer necessary for its operation. Removing these unneeded plugins can improve the performance and security of your WordPress website.
Unused plugins can slow down your site and create potential security vulnerabilities. Regularly auditing and removing plugins that are no longer needed is part of good website management.
In this article, we will show you how to properly uninstall a WordPress plugin.
Why do you need to uninstall WordPress plugins?
There are thousands of WordPress plugins available. While it is easy to install WordPress plugins on your website , it is also important to uninstall the WordPress plugins that you no longer want to use.
WordPress plugins are like applications that you can run on your website. This gives them a great deal of control over your website. While plugin authors do their best to make their plugins secure, vulnerabilities occasionally appear.
This means that any plugins you’re not using on your site can become a potential liability. This is especially true if you don’t update them, which can lead to security threats.
Keeping unnecessary files on your website will also increase your WordPress backup size, and you will need more time to download or restore the backup.
Of course, you can install as many WordPress plugins as you want. However, if you don’t use a plugin, then we think you should properly uninstall it.
What is the difference between deactivating and uninstalling a WordPress plugin?
Deactivating a plugin is like turning it off when you are not using it. Many users make a habit of going directly to the plugins page and deactivating the plugins they don’t want to use.
Deactivating a plugin without permanently deleting it can be very handy for debugging and fixing bugs, as it will retain your settings and configuration if you reactivate it.
However, users often end up finding a different solution and stop using the plugin.
A deactivated WordPress plugin can still make your website vulnerable to attacks as it can still be used to run malicious code on your website.
That’s why we always recommend that you only deactivate plugins when you need to temporarily disable them. If you don’t plan to enable it anytime soon, it’s best to uninstall the plugin.
By properly uninstalling plugins, you can also clean out your database of junk data that plugins often leave behind. This can help improve your site’s performance because your database won’t become bloated with unnecessary data.
That being said, let’s look at how to remove plugins from your WordPress site. Here are the topics we will cover:
- How to Uninstall a WordPress Plugin
- Removing extra files added by WordPress plugins
- Deleting Unused Shortcodes in WordPress
- Cleaning the WordPress Database
- Expert Guide to WordPress Plugins
How to Uninstall a WordPress Plugin
WordPress makes it very easy to uninstall plugins from the admin area. Simply log in to your WordPress dashboard and go to Plugins » Installed Plugins page.
You will see a list of plugins currently installed on your site. Active plugins are highlighted with a blue background and come with a link to deactivate them.
Inactive plugins, on the other hand, have a link to activate or delete them from your website. To uninstall a plugin, go ahead and click on the ‘Delete’ link located below the plugin’s name.
WordPress will now ask you to confirm that you want to delete the plugin and its data. All you have to do is click on the ‘OK’ button to continue.
WordPress will now safely remove the plugin from your web server. That’s it, you have successfully uninstalled the plugin from your WordPress website.
There are more steps you can take to remove all traces of the plugin. However, these steps are optional and not recommended for beginners.
Removing extra files added by WordPress plugins
In most cases, you can completely uninstall a WordPress plugin by simply deleting it. However, some plugins store files outside of the plugin folder. These files are not deleted when you uninstall the plugin.
You can check and delete the files stored by the plugin using your WordPress hosting file manager or an FTP client. Simply connect to your website using FTP and go to the /wp-content/
folder.
Many WordPress backup plugins , gallery plugins , and sliders create and store data directly in the wp-content folder. If you do not have a full backup of your WordPress site, you should download these files to your computer as a backup.
You can then use an FTP client to safely delete the files from your server.
Deleting Unused Shortcodes in WordPress
Many WordPress plugins use shortcodes to add content to your posts or pages. Once you deactivate or uninstall the plugin, these shortcodes will appear in your posts and look pretty ugly.
Here’s what the shortcode will look like in your content:
[pluginshortcode]
You can easily disable shortcodes by adding this code to your theme’s functions.php file or by using a code snippet plugin like WPCode (recommended):
01.add_shortcode( ``'pluginshortcode'``, ``'__return_false'` `);
This code adds the shortcode back but makes it display nothing. Don’t forget to replace it pluginshortcode
with the shortcode tag used by the plugin you want to remove.
It’s worth noting that if you ever decide to use the plugin again, you’ll need to remove this code.
Cleaning the WordPress Database
Some WordPress plugins create their own tables in the WordPress database. If there is too much data in these tables, it will increase the size of your WordPress backup.
You can delete these tables using phpMyAdmin. However, we must warn you that you should be very careful when making any changes to your WordPress database.
When making changes to your website’s database, even the slightest mistake can break your website. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you make a complete WordPress backup before doing anything.
All of the WordPress hosting providers we recommend offer cPanel with phpMyAdmin.
Go ahead and log in to your cPanel account and then scroll down to the Databases section. Next, you can click on the “phpMyAdmin” icon.
After that, you need to click on the database and select the table you want to delete.
Once you’ve selected a table, simply select the “Delete” option from the drop-down menu at the bottom of the list to delete it.
You will now see a warning that the tables are about to be deleted.
You need to click the "Yes" button to confirm the action.
phpMyAdmin will now drop the tables and delete all the data in them. Please note that this action is irreversible because once you drop the tables you will not be able to recover them unless you have a backup.
For more details, you may want to check out our beginner’s guide to WordPress database management with phpMyAdmin .
Expert Guide to WordPress Plugins
We hope this article helped you learn how to properly uninstall a WordPress plugin. You may also want to check out some of our other guides related to getting the most out of WordPress plugins:
- What are WordPress plugins? How do they work?
- Beginner's Guide: How to Choose the Best WordPress Plugins
- Do Inactive Plugins Slow Down WordPress? Should You Delete Them?
- Must Have WordPress Plugins for Business Websites
- How to Enable Automatic Updates for WordPress Plugins and Themes
- How to Install a WordPress Plugin (Beginner’s Step-by-Step Guide)
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